When Twitter announced in 2016 that it planned to shut down Vine, the news cleaved through the creator community. Thousands of creators had started their careers by making six-second videos, and suddenly the platform where their content, their peers, and their audience resided was no longer going to exist.

But Vine’s shuttering was a strange thing. Yes, it was an undeniable loss for creators. But, at the same time, it sparked a new wave of content creation. Instead of being discouraged from pursuing content further, some creators (like Liza Koshy and David Dobrik, to name a couple of the most prominent) moved to YouTube and kept making videos.

Now, our community is potentially on the edge of another platform loss. TikTok parent ByteDance has until Jan. 19 to divest ownership of TikTok’s operations in the U.S. It’s refused so far, and the Supreme Court is currently hearing its case for why it shouldn’t be banned. But unless the court stays the ban law or TikTok finds a new owner (like MrBeast?), its app will soon become inaccessible to all 170 million U.S.-based users.

That user base includes millions of creators, many of whom found new careers on TikTok during COVID lockdowns. TikTok is where they post content, interact with their followers, and (perhaps most importantly) make the majority of their income.

So, if TikTok gets banned, WTF are they supposed to do?

Well, luckily, the Washington Post sat down with some Vine veterans and asked what they did to move forward when Vine shut down. And they have some pretty good advice.

Own your content, trust your audience, and go with the flow

From singer/songwriter Ricky Montgomery, who started on MySpace and went on to gather 200,000 followers on Vine: Save your content.

“Download every video you have, even the ones in your drafts,” he said. He also said creators should try crossposting to other platforms: “If it worked once, odds are it’ll work again.”

Competitor platforms like Triller are trying to capitalize on TikTok’s potential closure by giving creators ways to upload their videos directly from TikTok to its platform, but we suggest ensuring everything is saved locally, to your own private drive. (Even if TikTok wasn’t closing, we’d suggest this; things can always happen to platforms, and your content is only 100% safe with you.)

From Sarah Schauer, who had over 850,000 followers on Vine when it closed: Focus on the process of making content. If you did it once, you can do it again.

“It felt like this social media would last forever,” she said about Vine. “I lost my friends on there. All my hard work was gone. It was incredibly sad.”

Then, in 2019, she joined TikTok, and built a new audience of 2.1 million people (some of whom, she told the Post, remember her from her Vine days). Now, she’s trying to ban-proof her content by making a podcast, a Substack, and trying out trending Chinese app RedNote. Ultimately, her goal is to enjoy making content, and trusting that people will find her based on shared interests.

“Instead of chasing lightning strikes, focus on creating moments of thunder. Give your audience space to breathe and connect,” she said. “Fall in love with the process of making content, not just the rush of going viral.”

And from Malik Taylor, who went viral just a week before Vine shut down and now has 230,000 followers on TikTok: Keep an eye on where traffic is flowing.

This isn’t the case of one creator losing their platform and having to establish somewhere else alone. If TikTok shuts down, there will be a mass exodus, and people—creators and viewers alike—will be looking for fellow “TikTok refugees” on other platforms.

“[L]earn how to pivot and figure out the social language on the next platform,” he told the Post.

Another creator, YouTuber/singer Twaimz, agreed. “You have to look at what works for other people and make it your own. See what is popping to pop.”

The Post also spoke to several more creators; we recommend TikTokers check out its full piece if they’re looking for a little reassurance ahead of a potential ban.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, TikTok by James Hale
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MrBeast‘s $100 million Amazon original Beast Games just set the ecommerce giant’s new record for most-watched unscripted series ever. But how does its viewership hold up to what MrBeast’s (aka Jimmy Donaldson) videos get on YouTube?

Per Variety, Beast Games got 50 million viewers in the 25 days after it premiered Dec. 19. Amazon says that makes it the #1 unscripted series of all time, and the #2 overall series debut of 2024, beaten only by the much-anticipated live-action Fallout.

It was also apparently Amazon’s most “acquisitive” series since Fallout, which means it drove more new Prime subscriber growth than every other original released in 2024 other than the video game adaptation.

Amazon additionally noted that 50% of Beast Games’ viewers have been outside the U.S., with sizable watch time from India, the U.K., and Mexico.

The international audience aspect tracks with what we see on MrBeast’s YouTube channel. He’s known for having a large number of international viewers—so many that he was the primary case study YouTube used to introduce its multi-language subtitle and dub tracks for creators interested in cultivating audiences outside the U.S.

But how does the rest of Beast Games‘ performance compare to his YouTube content?

One caveat we need to mention is that Amazon (like many streamers) doesn’t disclose what it counts as a “viewer.” Does it register a viewer when someone watches a full episode, or when they watch 30 seconds? Does it account for potential duplicate viewing on multiple devices? Would someone watching on their phone, then TV, then laptop be counted as three different people? Or was Amazon tracking each Prime subscriber as one viewer, no matter where they watched? What about multiple people using the same Prime account?

Amazon hasn’t publicly answered any of these questions, so we can’t speculate an exact 1:1 comparison between viewership on its service and viewership on YouTube. (Also worth noting Amazon says viewers instead of views.)

What we can say is that when MrBeast posts long-form videos on YouTube, they almost always get 150+ million views within their first seven days on the platform. We know this thanks to our Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Reports, where we track every single sponsored video uploaded to YouTube each week. MrBeast regularly takes the #1 spot, and it’s not even close; other top creators tend to get no more than 15 million views per week on their latest videos while he’s cranking between 100 and 200 million.

So, those are the raw numbers we have to compare. On Amazon, Beast Games‘ first five episodes got 50 million viewers in a little over three weeks. On YouTube, MrBeast can drop a video and get 150+ million views in seven days.

Does this difference mean signing that $100 million production deal with Amazon wasn’t worth it? Not necessarily. MrBeast is known for making high-octane, bombastic YouTube videos that take enormous, expensive production effort, but Beast Games was a whole ‘nother level. It had over 2,000 contestants at its start and needed numerous complicated sets and massive logistical arrangements (some of which allegedly proved too challenging for support staff). It’s also his longest series yet.

Having Amazon’s cash and production resources in hand made the whole thing happen. It gave MrBeast a path to producing TV-style content for distribution off YouTube and provided an alternative route to reach living rooms and new audiences who don’t consume his regularly scheduled programming. If Donaldson’s goal is to make MrBeast a household name—one that can be leveraged to market and sell his Feastables, Lunchly, and other ventures—then expanding beyond YouTube is a necessary step.

For Amazon, this appears to be a win, too. While we don’t have transparent access to all the numbers, the math seems promising: if Beast Games cost the streamer $100 million, is second only to Fallout in attracting new Prime subscribers, and Fallout’s first season had a $153 million budget (and the show was successful enough on all accounts to be renewed for a second season), the ROI appears to be positive and trending in the right direction.

At least for now, the biggest chunk of MrBeast’s viewership will continue to come from YouTube. But 50 million people is nothing to sneeze at—and we’ll get a better picture of the series’ total impact after its final episode releases Feb. 13.

Filed under: Creator, Homepage Feature, MrBeast by James Hale
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Kai Cenat and a handful of other content creators have been named in Drake‘s lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) where he accuses it of purposefully making Kendrick Lamar‘s diss track “Not Like Us” go viral.

Lamar dropped the track in May 2024 as the final clang in an ongoing rap battle with Drake. Like his prior track “Meet the Grahams,” Lamar used “Not Like Us” to accuse Drake of sexual misconduct and pedophilia–allegations the latter has denied. The song not only effectively ended the rap battle, but became a #1 song on Billboard‘s Hot 100 and the center of much discussion online.

It’s that second bit Drake is concerned about. His lawsuit targeting UMG (but, interestingly, not Lamar) accuses the music production company of whitelisting “Not Like Us” so creators across platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok could make content reacting to it without having their videos and streams demonetized.

The suit also accuses UMG of paying “influencers on Instagram and X to post content about [“Not Like Us”] for the purpose of spreading the content to larger audiences.” We know record labels pay to have songs promoted—in fact, it’s one of the primary ways music publishers of all sizes hype up new releases these days—but can’t independently verify whether UMG paid special attention to promoting “Not Like Us.”

As for reaction content, it points to YouTube videos and Twitch streams from creators like Cenat, RDC, No Life Shaq, CartierFamily, and Zias!.

One of the suit’s central claims is that these creators could not have posted content reacting to “Not Like Us” without getting demonetized unless UMG chose to whitelist the track. Whitelisting is a process where musicians and music publishers can tell content platforms they don’t want to copyright claim uses of a song. That way, systems like YouTube’s Content ID won’t flag or demonetize creators for using it.

We cannot independently verify whether UMG individually whitelisted “Not Like Us.” What we do know is that UMG has broad licensing agreements with YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok that allow creators on all three platforms to legally use music from its catalog. These agreements are often sweeping in nature and don’t usually single out individual artists or songs; instead, they give platforms and creators a large chunk of music they’re allowed to utilize in content. It’s possible that “Not Like Us” was covered by this prior agreements.

Are platforms cool with reaction content?

What’s also worth noting here is that Drake’s suit specifically targets reaction content, which is a thorny topic in the creator industry. It’s legally murky, since the whole premise is that a creator takes another person’s content, plays it for their audience, and reacts to it.

In most cases, wholesale taking another person’s content and rebroadcasting it is a copyright violation. But with reaction content, things can get messy, because if the reacting creator contributes enough new material on top of the rebroadcasted content, their reaction video or stream could be considered transformative—and therefore safe from copyright issues.

What constitutes “enough” new material? That’s where things are murky. And, in lots of cases, to avoid having to thread that murkiness, platforms will simply leave reaction content (a huge genre these days) alone.

Basically, the creators cited in Drake’s suit could have been allowed to monetize reaction content about “Not Like Us” because UMG clandestinely worked with platforms to whitelist this single track…or they could have been allowed because of prior licensing agreements and/or because platforms don’t police reaction content too stringently.

Whatever the situation was here, it’s important to know that the named creators aren’t being accused of anything. Drake’s sole target in this suit is UMG, which he accuses of promoting “Not Like Us” so it could have leverage over him in contract renewal discussions.

“As to Drake, in 2024, his contract was nearing fulfillment. On information and belief, UMG anticipated that extending Drake’s contract would come at a high cost to UMG; as such, it was incentivized to devalue Drake’s music and brand in order to gain leverage in negotiations for an extension,” the suit alleges.

UMG issued a statement Jan. 15, saying that it has “worked tirelessly for many years to help [Drake] achieve historic commercial and personal financial success.”

“He now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music,” it added.

Filed under: Creator, Homepage Feature by James Hale
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With a TikTok ban looming in the United States, other platforms are increasing spending to lure the so-called “refugees” who will seek new feeds after losing access to the For You Page. Though everyone from Triller to Xiaohongshu has made overtures to that uncommitted audience, one of the strongest appeals has come from Snapchat. The app that made its name with disappearing content is marketing its stars days before the U.S. “divest-or-ban” law goes into effect and seals TikTok’s fate.

The new Snapchat campaign invites users to “Find Your Favorites” on the app. The faves in question are popular creators like  Loren Gray, Savannah Demers, Matt Friend, Avani Gregg, and Harry Jowsey, all of whom reach large audiences with their Snaps.

Snapchat’s write-up of the campaign comes with testimonials from the featured stars. “Snapchat has helped me connect with my fans on a more personal level,” Gregg said in a statement. “I have been using Snapchat for YEARS and it is still my most used app. It allows me to get rewarded while being my true authentic self.”

The creators featured in Find Your Favorites have something in common: They all got big on TikTok before expanding their reach on (and inking partnerships with) Snapchat. The campaign seems to be appealing to TikTok users who spent time on the app to experience its creator culture. Snapchat is showing that it can be the go-to platform for those fans once TikTok is no longer available. Should those users sign up on Snapchat, they’ll find TikTok-like features and unified revenue streams that will support Snapchat’s status as the TikTok community’s next destination.

Snap is not exactly jumping the gun by imagining a U.S. social media landscape without TikTok. According to The Information, the ByteDance-owned app is preparing for an immediate shut-off in the U.S. if the divest-or-ban law’s January 19 start date is not pushed. So even though the ACLU and some Senators are doing everything they can to keep TikTok operational, its competitors are envisioning an FYP-free future that will almost certainly come to pass.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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The Kremlin is finding ways to limit YouTube‘s influence in Russia, and a local platform is rising as a result. According to recent findings, VKontakte got more monthly web traffic than YouTube in Russia during December 2024.

The news of VKontakte’s ascendance comes from RBC, which cited data from Mediascope. VKontakte reached 92 million users in Russia during the final month of the year, whereas YouTube’s total dipped below 90 million.

YouTube’s declining numbers in Russia are the result of a years-long disagreement over the status of state-sponsored YouTube channels, like the ones operated by media outlet Russia Today (RT). After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, YouTube demonetized many of those channels, citing “extraordinary circumstances.”

Russian YouTube users began noticing dramatic slowdowns on the YouTube app in 2024. The apparent throttling intensified later in the year, with federal censorship agency Roskomnadzor stating ithat “numerous violations of Russian legislation and disrespect for our country and citizens are grounds for taking action against YouTube.” The Kremlin has also taken legal action against Google, seeking damages greater than the world’s GDP.

Thanks to YouTube’s declining traffic in Russia, Slavic creators who once dominated our Tubefilter charts have noticeable viewership decreases. According to Gospel Stats, kids’ channel BorisKateFamily went from 1.6 billion monthly views in March 2024 to 325 million monthly views in November. Other kidfluencer channels with ties to Russia, such as Like Nastya and Vlad and Niki, now operate internationally out of cities like Miami and Dubai.

With the slowdowns rendering YouTube unusable for many in Russia, 18-year-old VKontakte has risen up the domestic social media rankings. Until recently, the so-called “Russian Facebook” was best known in the West for its notable leadership. It was co-founded by Pavel Durov, the entrepreneur who later became CEO of Telegram and made headlines when he was arrested for his failure to address criminal activity on the messaging app.

The current CEO of VKontakte parent company VK Group is Vladimir Kiriyenko, a Putin ally who the Biden Administration sanctioned in 2022. VK’s ties to the global elite should send a message to U.S. politicians who are preparing to enact a TikTok ban in the coming days: The shutdown of one social media hub will always benefit another, and those beneficiaries come with their own sets of complications.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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If you’ve caught any live coverage of the 2025 Australian Open on YouTube this week, you may have noticed that the players looked a bit funny. To provide tennis fans with a level of access that was previously unavailable, the Australian Open has gone live with streams that replace the 128 competitors with animated avatars.

The streams can be found under the “Live” tab on Australian Open TV, the official YouTube home of the annual Melbourne-set tournament. The players aren’t the only odd-looking part of the broadcasts. The ball is bigger than normal, the fans and court officials are completely still, and the audio is piped in from the TV feed.

If you’ve spent much time around the Nintendo Wii, you’ll notice that the animated players resemble the big-headed avatars from Wii Sports Tennis, one of the most-played video games of all time. But these streams serve a greater purpose than nostalgia, no matter how strong those feelings may be.

By taking the on-court action in a Wii Sports direction, the Australian Open is using technological innovations to get around rebroadcast rules. The rising adoption of AI has led to the launch of alternative sports streams, which can put the Simpsons onto an NFL field or give creators a space where they can dissect game action alongside fans.

The Australian Open media team recognized that those left-field broadcasts offered more than just opportunities to reach new audience segments. They also allow rights holders to show on-court action without actually showing it. The Australian Open’s TV partners still get their exclusive coverage, and the fans get 24/7 access to one of the year’s four Grand Slam events.

In the tennis world, that access is a pretty big deal. While other sports leagues have embraced digital platforms with revenue sharing programs and other opportunities for creators, the ATP and WTA Tours have left viewers frustrated. Grand Slams like the French Open offer brief highlight reels for epic matches that last for multiple hours.

The animated streams are here to change that narrative. They’re particularly useful for tennis fans in the West, who can now catch the Australian Open without staying up until the middle of the night.

Given the current popularity of marathon streams on platforms like YouTube and Twitch, tennis — with its slow pace and strategic intricacies — should be well-positioned to become the next big sport on the internet (move over, golf). The Australian Open just has to make sure that its animated broadcasts don’t look too much like Wii Sports. If they do, Nintendo might come calling.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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Mark Zuckerberg‘s now-infamous suck-up video has sparked a $30 million movement to “save social media from billionaire capture.”

A group of tech advocates and celebrities that includes Mark Ruffalo, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Mozilla Foundation Executive Director Nabiha Syed, Mozilla Foundation President Mark Surman, New_Public Co-Director Deepti Doshi, and Future of Technology Institute Executive Director Sherif Elsayed-Ali (among many others) has banded together to create an “independently hosted [social media] infrastructure” built on Bluesky‘s AT Protocol.

The initiative is called Free Our Feeds, and it wants to raise $30 million to “create an entire ecosystem of interconnected apps and different companies that have people’s interests at heart.”

“With Zuckerberg going full Musk last week, we can no longer let billionaires control our digital public square,” the group wrote on Free Our Feeds’ official website. “Bluesky is an opportunity to shake up the status quo. They have built scaffolding for a new kind of social web. One where we all have more say, choice and control. But it will take independent funding and governance to turn Bluesky’s underlying tech—the AT Protocol—into something more powerful than a single app.”

The AT Protocol is the open-source technology upon which Bluesky is built. It bones were originally developed by an independent research group within Twitter, back when co-founder Jack Dorsey was still CEO (and when it was still called Twitter…). When Dorsey left and founded Bluesky, it developed–and continues to develop–the full-fledged version, which aims to allow for decentralized social networking.

You’ve probably most commonly heard “decentralized” in reference to cryptocurrency, which be created by anyone and are not controlled by any country or financial institution. Proponents of decentralized social media networks have similar goals.

“Bluesky’s underlying technology, the AT Protocol, could offer a new pathway for the social web. Yet as it stands, it is still venture-capital backed,” Elsayed-Ali said in a statement. “This important initiative aims to safeguard Bluesky’s underlying technology and put it on an independent pathway, so that the future of social media can be freed from the whims of any one company or group of billionaires.”

The initiative’s goal is to give Bluesky users, developers, and researchers access to the content and data posted on its platform “no matter what the company decides to do in the future,” The Verge reports.

Free Our Feeds says the $30 million it raises will go to three things:

• Establishing a public-interest foundation to make the AT Protocol technology “independent and globally standardized.”
• Build independent infrastructure that will interact with Bluesky, “guaranteeing Bluesky users and developers have uninterrupted access to data streams, regardless of corporate decisions.”
• And finally, fund independent developers to create apps built on the AT Protocol, “fostering healthier and more equitable online spaces.”

As The Verge points out, the folks behind Free Our Feeds are not the only people thinking about who controls social media. Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko announced Monday that he is transferring ownership of the silo-model social network to a nonprofit because “Mastodon should be owned or controlled by a single individual.”

We don’t know if anything concrete will come of the initiative, but it’s worth considering this all comes as Zuckerberg (and thus Meta) is under fire for bowing to the incoming Trump administration, X continues to decline in Elon Musk‘s pocket, and TikTok is on the verge of being banned. Maybe it is time for something new.

Filed under: Homepage Feature by James Hale
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A beloved source for positive learning content on YouTube is popping over to Netflix as well. Ms. Rachel, an early childhood educator whose sing-songy and age-appropriate videos have drawn more than 13 million subscribers to her primary YouTube hub, is launching a quartet of Netflix compilations amid a flurry of offline activity.

Ms. Rachel’s first contribution to the Netflix library will drop on January 27. That’s when a quartet of compilations will make Ms. Rachel’s content available for the streamer’s worldwide subscriber base. Toddlers who are trying to pick up basic skills like speech, reading, and talking will be able to turn to Netflix to get help from an internet favorite (at least among the parents of young children I know).

“As any parent — or anyone else with a small child in their lives — likely already knows, Rachel Accurso, or Ms. Rachel, is a beloved and passionate educator whose videos for her phenomenally popular YouTube channel inspire ‘littles’ and their families to learn and bond together,” reads a Netflix blog post. “Incorporating singing, dancing, and play, Ms. Rachel’s videos help children learn how to talk and express themselves and their emotions.”

The current state of the kid-friendly digital media ecosystem explains why Netflix is so eager to join forces with a YouTube tastemaker. The streamer’s viewership data has shown that children’s programs rank among the most-watched pieces of Netflix content.

To capitalize on that trend, Netflix has inked original content deals with CoComelon owner Moonbug and other similar companies, but those efforts haven’t stopped other platforms from gaining ground. YouTube viewership among two-to-11-year-olds went up 4% last year at Netflix’s expense. Ms. Rachel, who typically gets hundreds of millions of views per month, was one major factor underlying that shift.

But Ms. Rachel’s star is even shining beyond the internet. She is releasing new books out of a deal she signed with Penguin Random House last year, and her toys made her a bestseller during the recently-concluded holiday season. Ms. Rachel merch has gotten so hot that the creator has been forced to warn her subscribers about the knockoff toys that are scamming customers by imitating her licensed creations.

It’s hard to imagine that the Ms. Rachel brand has any more room to grow, but the Netflix deal will introduce her better-for-you brand of children’s entertainment to new audiences. Beyond the four compilations dropping in January, additional collabs between Ms. Rachel and Netflix are slated to arrive later in 2025.

Filed under: Alloy Entertainment, Alternate Reality Game (ARG), AMC, American Music Awards, Animated, Animé, Annoying Orange, Anyone But Me, Applications, Arrested Development, Art, Articles, Auto-tune The News, Emmy Awards, Emmys, Featured, Format, Fox International Channels, Friday Rewind, Fullscreen, Fun Little Movies, Funding, Funny Or Die, Game of Thrones, Game Show, Grace Helbig, Hank Green, Homepage Feature, iJustine, Issa Rae, Mortal Kombat: Legacy, News, Vine by Sam Gutelle
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At the time of this article, recent updates suggest that the U.S. Supreme Court will not rule in TikTok‘s favor this week. If that prediction comes true, the “divest-or-ban” law — which forces TikTok to be either divested from parent company ByteDance or banned in the United States — will go into effect on January 19.

TikTok has warned that the divest-or-ban law (which is more likely to result in the latter of those outcomes) will have massive economic and legal ramifications if enacted. The embattled app sees the U.S. statute as an overzealous regulation that would unfairly target specific companies while limiting Americans’ civil liberties.

As the final countdown to the law’s start date continues unabated, some of the politicians who initially passed it are starting to see TikTok’s point. Senators and Congresspeople who voted in favor of the bill are receiving widespread hate on social media, and a few of them have even proposed a new measure that would give TikTok the time it needs to shore up its defense.

The proposal in question comes from the desk of Ed Markey (D-MA), a progressive leader who has joined with Republicans to decry the incoming TikTok ban. With the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act, Markey and his co-sponsors — U.S. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) and U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) — are trying to push back the start date on what Markey describes as a “rushed through” law.

“Today, TikTok is a space where users share critical resources during emergencies such as the Los Angeles wildfires, earn money to cover groceries and medical care, and build community in challenging times,” Markey said in a statement. “The Extend the TikTok Deadline Act is a straightforward, one-sentence bill designed to give Congress the time needed to fully assess the implications of this ban. I urge my colleagues to act swiftly on this legislation.”

Though Democratic lawmakers may stand up as TikTok allies on the Senate floor, their voting records tell a different story. The TikTok ban was passed as part of aid packages for Ukraine and Israel, making it more difficult for opponents to muster the political capital they’d need to vote it down. Perhaps for that reason, Markey, Wyden, and Booker all voted in the law’s favor. Among the TikTok Deadline Act’s co-sponsors, only Khanna (whose district includes the HQs of several major tech companies) can say he voted against the TikTok ban last year.

Some Americans have noticed what they see as blatant hypocrisy. TikTok videos from Senators like Booker and Bob Casey (D-PA) have been flooded with comments from aggrieved users who want to know why those pols are using an app they’re so eager to ban. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has received “you’re fired” comments on his TikToks, implying that he lost his reelection bid because he used TikTok while still voting to ban it.

TikTok’s band of political hypocrites — Senators Booker, Casey, and Brown — are all Democrats. That’s a bit of an ironic twist, since the effort to restrict the app began in Republican-controlled statehouses. But the GOP regulators knew enough to stay off TikTok in the first place; a January 2023 report from the Idaho Capital Sun found that nearly all of the 32 Congresspeople with active TikTok accounts belong to the Democratic Party.

There’s a lesson in there for the Dems: Perhaps party brass wagered that U.S. TikTok users would not be aware enough to realize that the Biden Administration was providing performative support for TikTokers while attempting to strip them of their livelihood behind the scenes. What happened instead was that public support for the TikTok ban fell off a cliff, the Dems were routed in the November elections, and Donald Trump’s defense of TikTok led the app’s officials to cozy up to him days before the start of his second term in the Oval Office.

So while Senator Markey’s Extend The TikTok Deadline Act is a potential lifeline for the titular app, it may be too little, too late. Senators already had the chance to throw their votes behind TikTok, and for whatever reason, most of them chose not to. How many people who passed the ban will come to regret that decision?

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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Amazon is, of course, the biggest e-tailer in the world—and, with Prime Video, it’s also one of the biggest streaming services. And since it started running ads on Prime Video content for all viewers last year, it also has an ever-expanding amount of digital ad inventory for marketers who want to run commercials alongside the originals it pays hundreds of millions of dollars to produce.

Amazon can tell those marketers if their ads drive sales on its platform. What it doesn’t do, however, is tell them whether their ads drive sales from retail giants like Walmart and Target. That info is traditionally available only to the retail giants themselves, kept in their “walled gardens” of data.

But retail media tech companies Stackline and Gigi have now signed a partnership to access it—and share it with marketers.

Per Adweek, Gigi is a startup that helps brands place TV ads on Amazon-, Disney-, and NBCUniversal-owned streaming services, then provides performance data. Stackline, meanwhile, collects first-party personal data from one million+ people who’ve opted in to having their in-store and online shopping tracked by Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Best Buy.

Adweek reports these one million people spend about $10 billion annually.

While this sample obviously covers just a fraction of Amazon’s 200 million Prime subscribers, it’s statistically significant enough to show brands what sort of behavior Prime viewers exhibit. The point of Stackline and Gigi’s partnership is to help marketers draw clearer lines between Prime Video ads and retail sales.

Why is that such a pressing concern? Because analysts like eMarketer forecast that brands will spend $60 billion this year on “retail media”–that is, digital ads aimed at encouraging people to buy from brick-and-mortar retailers rather than ecommerce platforms.

Gigi co-founder/CEO Adam Epstein told Adweek that brands can use it and Stackline’s data to create ads that, for example, target someone who shops at Walmart every week but watches Amazon video content. A brand leaning hard into Walmart sales might not know about that person without access to this data—but after knowing, could create ads specifically encouraging them to look out for its product next time they’re in the store. (That’s a big difference from a lot of digital advertising, which often has call-to-actions that encourage viewers to buy right now immediately.)

Greg Wolny, Stackline’s VP of Marketing, told Adweek he thinks this will lead to brands fine-tuning their current Amazon marketing, and maybe even buying more, since Stackline and Gigi are targeting marketers that currently spend big on traditional TV ads.

So far, “We’re seeing it impact overall [digital] allocation,” he said. “It’s not necessarily taking away from Amazon—in this case, Amazon is so robust.”

Zach Servideo, CEO at consulting firm Value Creation Labs, tells Tubefilter that “if Stackline and Gigi can do what they claim, they’re stitching together a retail media network that gives marketers conversion metrics across walled gardens.

“That’s impressive,” he says. “It reminds me of what Seattle-based ad tech Downstream Impact was striving toward in the late 2010s leading to their massive exit to Jungle Scout via Summit Partners in 2021. They were founded by former Amazon ads employees that were white-knighted into the Amazon ads ecosystem to build targeting and performance measurement tools–and yes, this included point of sale metrics mapping impressions to conversions.”

So, brands could have an edge by signing on with Stackline and Gigi. But Servideo thinks the business model here could also have wider implications.

“I’d also be on the lookout for how YouTube might benefit from all this,” he said. “If the biggest video advertising player globally can plug into conversion metrics across retailer walled gardens, it may be game over for the rest of media playing in the attention economy, if it isn’t already.”

Filed under: Amazon, Homepage Feature by James Hale
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The U.S. government’s decision to force a ban or divestiture of TikTok could end up being great news for another hot app from the Chinese tech sector. Xiaohongshu, the buzzy social shopping app known internationally as Red Note, is seeing a surge of U.S.-based signups as the American TikTok ban moves closer to becoming a reality.

Xiaohongshu is certainly not a new app on the market. Founded in 2013, it has already become one of the most popular social apps in China, especially among women under the age of 35. Amidst a broader social commerce boom that has spread across East Asia, China’s answer to Instagram has emerged as one of the biggest winners. Aided by features like its grid-based profile layout, its wealth of product reviews, and its in-app shopping hub, Xiaohongshu has pulled in $1 billion in profit (yes, profit) as it prepares for a potential IPO.

At this point, it would seem as if Xiaohongshu should prepare for something else, too. American “refugees” are preparing for a likely TikTok blackout by downloading Xiaohongshu en masse before the U.S. “divest-or-ban” law goes into effect on January 19.

According to the New York Times, Xiaohongshu was the most downloaded free app on the Apple App Store on January 14. The Americans who have added their names to the Red Note have brought massive traffic to the hashtag “#TikTokrefugee,” which has been viewed more than 100 million times on the app.

Since Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu is a Chinese-owned company, it could theoretically be targeted by the same law that underpins the U.S. TikTok ban. After all, that statute can be applied to any app that is deemed to be “controlled by a foreign adversary.”

In reality, it would take some effort for Congress to regulate surging TikTok alternatives — such as Xiaohongshu and ByteDance-owned Lemon8 — via the new law. Adding those apps to the list of “foreign adversary-controlled” companies would likely require a review from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

More importantly, the Americans flocking to Xiaohongshu don’t care if it’s controlled by a foreign adversary. In fact, their mass exodus to Chinese Instagram may be an active protest against draconian U.S. measures that characterize China-based apps as proverbial boogeymen. “I don’t really care if I’m using a Chinese app at all,” new Xiaohongshu user Manimatana Lee told The New York Times. “It’s like a place for me to escape reality. And if it’s making me feel good, I’m here for it.”

So even though the literal English translation of Xiaohongshu (“little red book”) is also the name of Mao Tse-Tung’s collected quotations, and even though Xiaohongshu has picked up its share of censorship accusations, red-blooded Americans don’t seem to care. The TikTok refugees are so eager to find the next hot app that they’re using ChatGPT to translate Xiaohongshu’s Chinese-language posts, the New York Times wrote.

((Hi everyone. Sam here. Brief editorial aside on linguistics: Though the literal English translations of Xiaohongshu and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung are both written as “little red book,” the original Chinese names are different. Xiaohongshu is 小红书, while Chairman Mao’s book is 红宝书. Therefore, it doesn’t seem likely that Xiaohongshu was actually named after Mao’s little red book, even if both names allude to the positive connotations of the color red in Chinese culture. Carry on!))

Rather than speculating about Xiaohongshu’s regulatory future in the United States, it feels more prescient to imagine what this suddenly red-hot app will do to harness its influx of U.S.-based users. Americans have typically been more skeptical than their East Asian counterparts regarding social shopping, but the rise of Xiaohongshu could help normalize that phenomenon in the West. Who knows: By this time next year, there could be millions of Americans buying from Red Note-based sellers, whether Congress likes it or not.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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The blazes currently raging in Los Angeles will ultimately rank among the most devastating wildfires in California history. As the disaster takes its toll to the tune of thousands of displaced persons and billions in property damage, concerned onlookers are turning to YouTube to learn about the latest updates.

But standard news reporting is not the only type of wildfire coverage being offered on YouTube. The Los Angeles area is the center of the creator community, and many YouTubers who have been personally affected by the disaster have shared their experiences in honest, emotional vlogs.

Several creators are listed among the many entertainment figures who lost their homes thanks to the ongoing conflagration. Both members of Colin and Samir — the duo that offers insights related to creator content production process — lost their homes in the Pacific Palisades. They have been supported by a GoFundMe campaign that has raised more than a quarter of a million dollars.

But the wildfires also impacted a lot of people who aren’t in the entertainment business, and many creators used their platforms to advocate for assistance that will help as many Angelenos as possible. “A lot of people, when they think of L.A., that’s where they think the celebrities are,” gamer Markiplier said in his response to the fires. “But L.A. is an extremely large and diverse city with a ton of history and a ton of places in it that fall under the umbrella of being affected by these fires…I’m sure you’ve seen some pictures but seeing it first-hand is completely different.”

Markiplier’s video included a link to a Tiltify campaign supporting aid across Los Angeles. As part of a stunning assessment of the overall damage caused by the fires, the Corridor Crew urged viewers to back organizations like the American Red Cross, Direct Relief, and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

Other creators drew attention to friends and family members who could use help getting back on their feet. Citizen documentarian Andrew Callaghan of Channel 5 ventured into the ashes to speak with some locals who were among the most affected victims of the fires. Callaghan’s resulting video includes donation information for the families he interviewed.

As horrible as the wildfires are, the strong community response shows that platforms like YouTube can be valuable organizational tools during relief efforts. As some platforms look to cut back on features that protect citizen journalists, events like this one show just how much good that community can do.

Filed under: Alloy Entertainment, Alternate Reality Game (ARG), AMC, American Music Awards, Animated, Animé, Annoying Orange, Anyone But Me, Applications, Arrested Development, Art, Articles, Auto-tune The News, Emmy Awards, Emmys, Featured, Format, Fox International Channels, Friday Rewind, Fullscreen, Fun Little Movies, Funding, Funny Or Die, Game of Thrones, Game Show, Grace Helbig, Hank Green, Homepage Feature, iJustine, Issa Rae, Mortal Kombat: Legacy, News, Vine by Sam Gutelle
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